It would not be hard to make the underlying graphics code work on top of linuxfb. I think a patch for that might be floating around.
> Why does it need more than VGA text if it entirely text-based?
Did you really watch the video? You can see that while acme is entirely about editing text, the UI itself is graphical.
(I currently run emacs on arch linux with no x)
VGA text is everywhere. No need to switch to Linux (and patch it), switch to OSX, use hardware than runs Plan 9, or any other restrictions. No need to run X11.
It just works.
Granted, I see no real reason for it, as you might as well hook the existing code into e.g. Linux' framebuffer mode, instead of porting it to curses. It would run over ssh, of course, but so does acme with X forwarding, and the best general solution would probably involve merging sam's client/server mode with acme.